Chapter Twenty Five
Mea Maxima Culpa
When Gibbs reaches the Squad Room with expectations of progress, he discovers he's not the only one. Ruth and Anne Wetzel, along with Frank Norton, impatiently await him along with Ziva and Michelle, and they're not hesitant about voicing their expectations.
He suspects the older woman hasn't slept in the days past. Her face is drawn and pinched, her movements sharp and tense while her blood-shot eyes testify to unremitting distress. She starts to brush aside blonde hair that'd dislodged in her quick turn to the bullpen entrance, but switches the movement to her unbandaged right hand.
"Agent Gibbs, it's been four DAYS! Aren't you ready to make an arrest yet?"
He tries to keep his patience – they're grieving family even if they are authorized, by their clipped Visitor passes, intruders. He doesn't want them focusing on their frustrations or angry impatience, he wants them focused on answering his questions. "Where's your other daughter?"
"She said she has an assignment," Anne bites, evidently frustrated as well by being unable to reach her.
Good, Karen Wetzel remembers her place is with Melanie Kelman's team, helping to do other than to drive him crazy.
"We're making progress," he says, noting that this time Frank Norton is with his fiancé and particularly that his team, though at their desks, pay strict attention but stay in the background. Fine, he has enough tact to deal with the trio.
He turns to Ruth Wetzel. "When did you leave for Pimmit Hills?"
"Straight from my damned job when my fucking boss wouldn't even let me meet the Reagan when it pulled into port. I didn't see my husband at all because of that useless waste of time that cocksucker dumped on me. It could've been handled with a conference call but noooo, I had to go all the way out there and fucking stay overnight and then find out on the way back that Bill was dead!"
x
Unfazed by Ruth's fury, he glances to Anne. "And you were at?"
"At our engagement dinner," Frank Norton answers for his to-be wife.
"So did you see your father?"
"I found his body," she declares, angry perhaps at thinking she has to remind him. She'd arrived at Monroe University Hospital early Wednesday morning, found her father dead when she'd convinced the nurse on duty just minutes after dawn to let her into the room so she could tell her father the good news about the previous evening's engagement.
"So did you see the Commander on Tuesday?"
"No, she didn't," Norton answers. Gibbs is beginning to appreciate, seeing the flare in Ruth Wetzel's eyes, at least one of her objections to the man. This is the second time he's interrupted to speak for her daughter.
"No," Anne cuts back in. "I was at work in West Hyattsville, then when I got back to Colonial Height we went to dinner, it was too late for visiting, that's why I saw him - found him - Wednesday morning."
"Can you think of any reason why your husband would be targeted?" he asks Ruth.
"You people asked me that already. No."
He glances to Anne, intending to convey by his expression 'what about you?'
Predictably, it's Norton who says "She can't either."
Angry witnesses sometimes say valuable things, and it won't take much sowing to reap discord in this gathering. "You always answer for her?"
"No I don't."
"You do so!" Ruth bites. "What the hell are you even doing here? This doesn't concern you!"
"I drove Anne here, you and Karen came along."
"Why you–! Then you can just wait in the car until we're done."
"Don't talk to him like that!" Anne steps between them.
Enough anger and discord. "When did you last hear from the Commander?" Will inconsistencies pop up in the known story?
Ruth pulls herself back into the conversation. "A few days before they docked." He looks to Anne, while simultaneously - not easy to do but he's had years in which to practice - glaring Norton into silence.
"The same thing, a message that they were coming in."
"You didn't speak to him?"
"No."
x
Curiouser by the moment. If he'd had the bronze leaves of a Major, the Marine equivalent of two wide and one thin gold bars of a Lieutenant Commander, on his shoulders, he'd have burned out the transmitter on the way back to Shannon and Molly.
"What about Karen?"
"He talked with her every day on the way in," Anne seethes.
"Probably figured if she's going to be a Navy cop," Norton says, "he should stay on her good side."
"You Fuck!" Ruth cuts, taking a step toward him but Gibbs also takes a step.
"Ziva, take Mr. Norton to Number One."
"With pleasure."
Gibbs wants to maintain anger but not out-of-control fury and the man's upsetting the balance, but he does take a second to wonder if the man will make it so far as Interrogation without Ziva breaking his arm.
x
When they're gone he can resume progress. "Why did the Commander communicate the details of his return directly with your other daughter but not tell either of you?"
"Because I'm getting married," Anne snaps.
"That's not certain," Ruth cuts.
"Oh, I'm engaged but not getting married? That's really smart, mother."
"You're still too much a child to know what marriage is!"
"What is it?" Gibbs cuts in. He suspects Anne was going to ask the same question, but he's interested in Ruth's answer though she gives it to her daughter.
"It's when a couple will work together maturely, overcome problems together as a team, something neither of you are ready for."
"Fuck you! We're here to see about Dad!"
x
Gibbs considers it good that at least one of them has gotten around to remembering that. He now has a sense as to why William Wetzel wasn't in frequent communication with his family and looks forward to hearing about his relationship with his younger daughter. He suspects there are less fireworks involved there.
"We're still working on it," is all he intends to tell the women now.
He turns to go to his desk, uses the movement to make eye contact with Palmer. 'Go upstairs, talk to her,' he says with the silent look. He wants the family plus one separated until he's satisfied he has all the answers he can expect to get from separate interviews.
Meantime, he'll stay here alone with the volatile pair. David and Palmer may return to find survivors.
Then again they may not.
x
Though the families had some lead time, about a week, as to when the Reagan would hit port, it seems that the killers, whoever they might be, had the same lead time yet used it far more efficiently in preparing quite elaborate deaths.
xxx
Nearly an hour after being given the evidence search assignment Tony and Tim begin the search at Robert Presit's apartment door.
They have a particular advantage over the Virginia State Troopers who had tried, as DiNozzo said, to hog the crime scene and, by extension, the entire case by preventing NCIS from examining vital clues.
They know exactly what they're looking for, a black bag somewhere on a straight line between the murder scene and the street-side ATMs.
xx
"This is going to be the easiest search of the month," DiNozzo predicts, which Tim considers particularly annoying since they've already checked the whole building again from rooftop to pick-the-lock basement. Tony had insisted upon that last because Abby had found scoring in the apartment lock that showed it had been picked.
She could tell that that job had been done by an amateur. A more experienced break-and-enter man would've caused less scraping.
At any rate, the search is far from being the easiest in history for they're now a block away on the line and have found nothing.
"I'll bet VST has it and are keeping it under wraps," Tim says.
"Not after the dressing down Ziva told me the boss gave them. From what I could tell she was leaving out, he probably pulled up great stretches of skin and troweled salt into the raw places."
"That's very professional, Tony."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Of all things, he doesn't want to get into a wasteful fight. "Nothing, Tony. Can we just get on with this?"
"No, we're not going anywhere."
Tim is about to ask why, but the situation and the words sound so familiar. "You found it, didn't you?"
"Uh huh," DiNozzo replies with a smug, victorious grin.
He's not in the mood for guessing games. "Where?"
"Right there."
x
Tim follows the pointing finger to a black Lexus parked across the street, in particular to the vehicle's undercarriage. There, in the shadow, hangs a black bag dangling three inches above the asphalt.
"Driver gets in, heads to who knows where. In a few miles it either falls off or the occasional friction wears a hole in the bag, our murder weapon falls on some road somewhere in the bi-state area - if we're lucky - and then gets run over a couple dozen times."
Tim bends low, inspects the knot holding the bag to the axle. Looks like a rough, fast but effective job. "Not bad."
"Well?"
"Well, what?"
"Crawl under and get it."
"You get it."
"Don't be ridiculous; this suit cost five hundred."
"Should've thought about that before–" Then the familiarity of this conversation impresses itself upon him; they've been having the same one for years and he's tired of it. Further, since the arguments usually work out in the same way and he's in a blue jacket and slacks rather than a suit, he accedes to the inevitable and crouches down.
He won't crawl under, however. He uses the knife from his back pocket to slice the bag's handle, preserving all the parts so they can get a DNA trace among any other potential evidence the imaginative mind of Abby Sciuto can discover.
When he comes up and opens the bag, it definitely hasn't been a wasted effort. The black handled steak knife is covered on the edge side with caked blood.
xxx
Karen Wetzel was just getting used to working with Melanie Kelman, Kenneth Templeton and Patrick Larsen, finding in them a less stressful and eclectic group than the agents downstairs. Melanie, as she'd directed to be called after the second 'Special Agent Kelman', looks to be only three years her senior, seemingly too young to be thought to be managing a team of men definitely her elders, but Karen tries not to jump to conclusions. Not only can't she get most people's ages right, but she'd died in Georgia on her first solo mission because she took her partner at face value.
But just as she'd gotten settled after a harrowing ride with her mother and sister - Thank God Agent Gibbs assigned her to this team and she had a way out when they got here - now she's opposite the witch she'd met the other day, the one who'd freaked her so far out she's barely in the same country.
This, however, is not an episode of 'Bewitched'. Not only is there no laugh track but whoever wrote this dialogue was not in a good mood.
"Your mother and sister said you were the only one your father communicated with in any detail," she's just said.
"I guess so," Karen says, utterly failing to get comfortable. Is this witch like a Jedi? She touched Michelle Hudson, just touched her, and took away her pain. It was like Obi-Wan Kenobi with Luke when you first see him on Tatooine. Are there any other powers Palmer has, any mind tricks to beware of?
"I guess so," she repeats in greater discomfort. She'd been in awe of the Asian woman ever since the trip back from the hospital. Couldn't Agent Gibbs have sent her own team leader, Special Agent McGee, to question her? That man she could imagine opening herself completely to–
No, wait - he's married. Darn it.
x
The witch raises her hand.
"EEEP!" she jumps back, almost topples out of her chair, causes Agents Kelman, Larsen and Templeton to look her way when the witch raised her hand in typical Jedi manner - and then hesitated an inch from brushing a long lock of brunette hair from beside her right eye.
All four stare at her, and all she wants to do is hide under a rock.
"Excuse me," Palmer says, a smile tugging at her lips as she brushes the hair away and lowers her hand, "did you just say 'Eeep'?"
"Ya huh."
"Why?"
"Because I'm scared you're going to cast some kind of spell on me, or use some Jedi mind power."
x
Michelle sighs so heavily it seems to shake the table. "Oh, for the Goddess' sake!"
"You're not?"
"I'm always a bit leery of her," Templeton puts in, "around the full moon."
"You have reason to be afraid," Michelle tells him. "You're a worse wolf than Special Agent DiNozzo, but it's my husband you have to be careful of." She turns to Karen. "Pat you can trust, but Ken's a total letch," she'll assist at any time in the men's LGBT camouflage, "but you! Don't confuse faith with anything else. This isn't a dark fantasy movie, and I have little tolerance for people who can't understand that."
"I'll understand. I promise."
"Then don't be afraid of me. I'm just a normal woman who happens to believe in things you don't."
"You're not going to turn me into a zombie?"
She tries not to let what she feels show but strains for patience. Wetzel's promise hadn't lasted ten seconds. 'Minerva, she really believes I can, just like Jimmy.' That had devastated her, but encountering this again in someone else makes her decide to have a good long look at her friends.
"I'm tempted... but I can't. That's where the fantasy movie thing comes in. But if I don't have answers when Special Agent Gibbs calls for them, he'll make the Witchcraft Trials of 1692 seem like an inconvenience."
"Okay. Shoot."
x
Once again, she's tempted. "When did you last hear from your father?" She's glad Karen seems able to talk about what happened to her dad without the peaks her mother and sister have, but she's still cautious. Peaks can come at any time and she's heard from Special Agent DiNozzo the story about the reason behind the creation of Rule 46.
"The morning he docked, Tuesday. He was already in the Sick Bay, but the meds the Corpsman gave him were keeping him comfortable - or as comfortable as one can expect to be. He had no worries; he'd been through the operations before. He was just going to be a day late in coming home."
"He wasn't nervous, concerned about any danger?"
"If he was, he hid it from me. He was annoyed the stones had hit him again and changed his plans, but he never seemed to expect what happened. That's why I was so shocked when the Senior Administrator, Mr. Zito, came and told me. All the way up here I'm trying to figure what complication from a simple surgery he's had half a dozen times could kill him. Then I get here and he's murdered."
"Can you think of who would want your father dead?"
"Michelle, that's all I've thought about for the past four days."
"And?"
"Nothing. Not a blessed thing."
xxx
Michelle has made her report to Gibbs, as has Ziva about Frank Norton, and the three Agents are deep into research in the now-quiet Operations Division. When Tony and Tim return, things are no longer quiet.
"Abby says thanks for the evidence," Tony announces.
"I really doubt that." Gibbs knows the woman is swamped under the burden of investigating five murders, including Special Agent Afloat Chris Drakis' explosively dismembered corpse and home plus what other agents have given her on a variety of unrelated cases.
"No, you're right, actually she said–"
"That she looks forward to your visit and she'll have results on the knife as quickly as humanly possible," Tim says diplomatically.
Gibbs actually considers this an even less likely recounting of Abby's actual message, but he'll leave it at that. Something's happening in the background with the woman, he'll find out what's throwing her off soon enough, but for now he has murders - and more - to solve.
He's about to turn to another point in this very heavy laden investigation when the plasma screen mounted between DiNozzo and McGee's desks comes alive with the image of his Senior Field Agent. The man's wearing yesterday's clothes and he's in Abby's lab.
x
"Hello," the image says, capturing their attentions. The only one who won't look is the man himself. "For those of you I don't know personally, I'm Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo and this message is going out simultaneously to every NCIS Agent in the Headquarters Division in hopes of getting in front of a terrible rumor - which I started. It's an extraordinary method I'll admit, but this is an extraordinary situation and I'm an extraordinary guy."
Gibbs watches his team, more attentive to them than the image on the screen. McGee's holding his breath, as though afraid of what'll come next. He knows every agent he knows and scores of people he doesn't know have seen or will see this damning film. Michelle looks like she's watching a train wreck she's powerless to stop. Ziva looks much the same, only her greater experience allows her to mask it behind a placid demeanor that fools no one.
x
"A few weeks ago I wasn't very extraordinary," DiNozzo continues his public confession and his real visage mirrors the catharsis visible on the screen. "I butted in, read information that wasn't intended for me - who among us hasn't done that? - but I wasn't on duty and the case I was getting on was my partner's - Tim McGee's."
The real DiNozzo looks to his partner, knowing where his yesterday image is going.
"For those of you who know what's coming I won't prolong the agony. For those who don't, you're the lucky few because you're getting the retraction without having to have the... Oh, the hell with it.
"The upshot is that I jumped to a conclusion. And worse, unlike a trained NCIS Special Agent I didn't check my facts, and my assumption hurt a lot of good people, some good friends.
"Now, and for the record: Reverend Mother Siobhan O'Mallory McGee, NCIS' Headquarters Division Chaplain and wife of Special Agent Timothy McGee, is not and never has been pregnant. She was absolutely not pregnant prior to her wedding, which was where the rumor that developed pointed to."
Tim winced at that title. If there's any title that he knows his wife detests, one he's been made to promise never to use, it's that inaccurate one, reverend mother.
But there's so much more to wince at.
x
"That thought existed only because I put my nose where it didn't belong and jumped to an unwarranted assumption. That assumption, and the out-of-control rumor that grew out of it, are not true but they have caused Mother McGee to resign as Chaplain – a decision I pray she finds it in her heart to change, because there are a lot of people here who need her.
"I'm not asking for forgiveness, I don't deserve it and as a ... not-so-good Catholic I have to do without it - but the rumor I caused has to die right this minute.
"To my partner Tim, I'm sorry. To Reverend Mother Chaplain McGee, I'm really sorry. Please don't resign on my account. There are too many people who need you."
The screen goes black.
x
A moment later Ziva is around her desk, then around Tony's as movement on the other end of the three desks draws her eyes to Michelle's quick departure. Ziva doesn't stop but hugs Tony, bending to reach him as Tim's voice breaks the quiet.
"Tony?"
DiNozzo has to look beyond Ziva's crouching body, she's not letting go. "Yes?" His voice carries a strain of uncertain apprehension.
"I forgive you."
x
Gibbs is behind Ziva and his voice startles her into straightening. "Took a lot of guts to do that."
"Thanks, boss. That means a lot, coming from yo–"
"Not brains, but guts." This 'thanks, boss' is somewhat deflated, but instead of a slap, Gibbs moves away but he has one last thing to say. "Hope you can live with the consequences."
"Consequences? What consequences?"
He gets back the look he hates worst of all, the one that assures him that 'you'll find out'.